Tonight on the Alexander & Goldman Show from 6-7pm AZ/PST, Pinal County Sheriff Paul Babeu and Cochise County Larry Dever will be our guests to talk about their new organization Border Sheriffs and dealing with illegal immigration in southern Arizona. Border Sheriffs is raising money to give the Sheriffs a voice in the lawsuits filed by the Obama administration and the ACLU to prevent them from enforcing the law they are sworn to uphold.

The total number of votes cast was 426 votes which was our highest ranking poll since we began Friday polling several weeks ago. Keep in mind that these polls are not scientific and they do prevent repetitive voting based on a cookie and IP address.

It’s also important to note that the final results also attest to which radio program/host has an active social media following. Watching Facebook and Twitter, anyone could see that several of the personalities were asking their followers to vote.

Regarding the names on the list, we did our best to include every Arizona-based, daily, political talk show host from Tucson to Yuma and Phoenix to Flagstaff.

I have also listened to or met almost everyone on the list and will tell you that each one is unique and does a great job with their shows covering the issues, interviewing guests and entertaining listeners. I encourage our readers to make an effort to listen to their shows whenever possible.

President Obama lost his cool last week after a Dallas-based reporter corrected his misstatement that he only lost by “a few percentage points in Texas” when the correct number was ten. While we can poke fun at Obama’s fuzzy political math, when his administration tells such glaring Texas sized lies about border security, the lives of our fellow citizens and our national security are jeopardized.

This occurred last month when Janet Napolitano told a group of border mayors in El Paso that, “There is a perception that the border is worse now than it ever has been. That is wrong. The border is better now than it ever has been.” This is despite a Government Accountability Office report that found that 85% of the border is not “fully sealed” and 56% is not under “operational control” of DHS.

President Obama recently met to meet with a number of self-proclaimed “stakeholders” in immigration policy where he repeated the false claim that the “Obama Administration has dedicated unprecedented resources to secure the border.” Obama makes these claims about increased border security to try to make amnesty more palatable for the American people.

The stated purpose of Obama’s meeting was to foster “a constructive national conversation on this important issue as we work to build a bipartisan consensus in Congress.”

A close examination of who was invited to the Whitehouse and who was not reveals just how out of touch Obama is with the American people on the issue of immigration.

By Obama’s own estimation, Arizona’s SB 1070 has become the focal point of the immigration debate in the nation. If he wanted a real conversation, he should have invited Governor Jan Brewer, Sheriff Joe Arpaio, or State Senate President and SB 1070 author Russell Pearce.

Governor Brewer responded to her non-invitation on Fox News, “You would have thought one of the [border state] governors would have been invited, since we are on the front lines fighting for security there…If we could sit down and discuss these things, we could get the solutions, maybe we could get something implemented.”

The reason why Governor Brewer was not invited is that Obama does not want a “conversation on this important issue,” he wants a monologue. Every single one of the 19 people Obama invited supports amnesty.

As to be expected, Obama invited a number of radical left wing activists like Al Sharpton and John Podesta of the George Soros funded Center for American Progress. He solicited the input of several police chiefs, mayors, and city council leaders from the cities of Philadelphia, San Antonio, Los Angeles, and New York. Every single one of these localities is a Sanctuary City where law enforcement refuses to cooperate with federal immigration authorities.

Also attending were union and business lobbyists, including AFL CIO president Richard Trumka, former pro-amnesty Senator turned corporate lobbyist Mel Martinez, and the CEO of the agribusiness conglomerate Cargill. Finally, he invited pro amnesty religious leaders from the National Association of Evangelicals and the Mormon Church.

Mesa, Arizona – Kirk Adams is excited to announce today his campaign to represent the East Valley in Congress, pledging to bring the same conservative principles and tough decision-making he exhibited as Arizona Speaker of the House back to Washington.

“I’ve taken on the unions, the lobbyists, the career politicians and the voices of stagnation here in Arizona, and I intend to take them on in Congress,” Adams said. “We can’t afford to kick the can down the road anymore. We need someone who will fight to cut spending, reform entitlements, secure our border and return to the founding principles of our Constitution before it’s too late.”

Adams is also proud to have the support of Senator Jon Kyl, who is endorsing Adams and will serve as the campaign’s Honorary Chairman.

“Senator Kyl is a mentor and a hero of mine, and I’m humbled and thrilled to have him as part of this campaign,” Adams said.

Senator Kyl, a national conservative leader, said Adams is the candidate he trusts to fight for the East Valley and conservative principles.

“Kirk is exactly the kind of fresh, conservative leader we need to send to Congress to stand up for our principles. He’ll make an outstanding congressman. My only regret is that I won’t be there to serve with him when he’s elected,” said Kyl.

Adams, a husband, father and a small businessman, is a lifelong resident of the East Valley. After building a successful property and casualty insurance business, Adams was first elected to the Arizona House of Representatives in 2006 hoping to craft conservative policies to make Arizona a better place for his family.

But he soon found himself frustrated by the failed attempts of the Republican majority to stop the liberal policies of Janet Napolitano and the Democrats. So, Adams decided to run against the veteran Speaker of the House after only one full term in office on a pledge of more aggressively pushing a conservative agenda and bringing more transparency to the Legislature.

Adams shocked political observers, when at only 35 years of age, his long-shot bid was successful – making him the youngest Speaker in Arizona’s history.

In his three years in the top leadership post in the House, Adams turned the tide. In the aftermath of Janet Napolitano’s spending spree, Adams negotiated and authored the first structurally balanced budget in at least five years – and without any accounting gimmicks or debt financing. In total, Adams pushed more than $3 billion in spending cuts through the House.

Adams’s Jobs Bill resulted in the largest permanent tax cut in Arizona history. Adams even took on the public-employee unions, authoring and passing a top-to-bottom reform of the state pension system to free taxpayers from ever increasing liabilities. And as Speaker, Adams helped ensure the passage of SB1070 and make sure it was defended both in the court of law and against the liberal media and national boycott groups.

“Our country is at a turning point,” Adams said. “If we don’t return to the founding principles of our Constitution and make tough decisions now to drastically cut spending and reform government, we will soon be living in an America we don’t recognize. I’ve got the record to prove I’m not afraid of taking on the old guard, the liberals and the media in order make the tough decisions necessary to save our country.”

“Matt brings the kind of leadership Arizona needs and I look forward to working with him.”

EAST VALLEY – Former Congressman Matt Salmon announced today that Congressman Trent Franks has endorsed his bid for Congress.

Franks said, “I have known Matt Salmon for many years. He is a solid fiscal conservative who has unparalleled experience in balancing budgets and protecting the taxpayers. Matt is a staunch defender of the unborn and a champion for second amendment rights. He has the experience, understanding, and skill to be a driving force in Congress. Matt brings the kind of leadership Arizona needs and I look forward to working with him.”

“I am honored to receive the support of Congressman Franks,” said Salmon, “He is a champion for limited government and reducing the burden on taxpayers. He has worked tirelessly on children’s issues and protecting the innocent. I am proud to call Trent my friend and I hope to soon call him my colleague.”

About Congressman Trent Franks

Congressman Franks is serving his fourth term in the United States Congress, representing the Second District of Arizona. He serves on the Armed Services Committee and the Judiciary Committee, where he is the ranking member of the Subcommittee on Commercial Law and Administration. He is an active member of the Republican Study Committee and is an Executive Committee Member of the Tom Lantos Congressional Human Rights Commission, co-founder and co-chairman of the International Religious Freedom Caucus. Congressman Franks also serves on a host of task force and caucus groups, including the House Working Group on Judicial Accountability, the Education Freedom Caucus, the House Working Group on Waste, Fraud and Abuse, the Liberty Caucus, the Human Rights Caucus, the India Caucus, the Anti-Terrorism Caucus, and is co-founder of the Israel Allies Caucus (IAC).

About Matt Salmon

Matt Salmon was first elected to the United States Congress in 1994 and served until 2000, honoring his term limit pledge. A proud fiscal conservative, Salmon was rated in the top five among all 535 members of the House and Senate by Citizen’s Against Government Waste for all six years he was in office. He is a lifetime member of the NRA with an A+ rating and also earned a 100% rating by the National Right to Life. He was also the proud recipient of the American Cancer Society’s “Top National Elected Official” award.

The man accused of initiating the drug buy that led to the 2010 death of a Chandler, Ariz., police officer made a plea bargain with federal prosecutors four months earlier to avoid a long prison term, and worked as an informant for the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration at some time prior to the deal erupting in gunfire.

But Chandler police did not know John H. Webber had been working with federal officials when they ran a “reverse sting” targeting a quarter-million dollars that Webber and his cohorts agreed to pay for 500 pounds of marijuana supplied by undercover officers. Had the deal gone down as planned, the police would have kept the money under Arizona’s forfeiture law.

But after the marijuana was delivered, one of the suspects opened fire with an AK-74 rifle, mortally wounding Detective Carlos Ledesma, according to police reports. Two other undercover detectives were shot, and two suspects were killed during the shootout on West Maldonado Drive in south Phoenix, about 16 miles from the Chandler border.

Chandler police did not bring in the DEA, the U.S. Attorney’s Office, or Phoenix police to help in the operation. If they had, any money obtained through forfeitures would have been split among the law enforcement agencies involved. It also would have given them a chance to learn one of the suspects had been working with federal agents.

Today’s decision by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals to grant a rehearing on Gonzalez v. Arizona before the entire membership of the court, (en banc) comes as great news to many, including Secretary of State Ken Bennett who promised to defend Arizona’s Proposition 200 all the way to the Supreme Court.

Proposition 200, when passed by Arizona voters in 2004, required that voter registration applicants provide documentary proof of citizenship. In addition it required that voters provide proof of identity at the polls on Election Day.

“Today’s decision to grant the petition for a rehearing en banc by the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals is encouraging,” said Secretary Bennett” “Arizonans obviously believe that people should provide proof of citizenship when they register to vote and we are pleased that the court may reconsider its decision.”

Last October, the 9th Circuit in San Francisco struck down Arizona’s requirement that residents provide proof of citizenship when they register to vote. Proposition 200 was passed by Arizona voters in 2004 and helps make sure that only eligible people vote in elections. The Court ruled that a federal voter-registration law supersedes Arizona’s requirement.

“What seems like common sense to most of us, others feel is a burdensome requirement,” the Secretary continued. “The previous decision by the 9th Circuit was an outrage, and I thought was a slap in the face to Arizonans who are concerned about the integrity of our elections. There isn’t a corner of this state where people are not concerned with voter fraud and opposition to the simple act of providing proof that you are legally eligible to participate in our elections is incomprehensible.”

Those registering to vote in Arizona are required to provide one of the following documents: a driver’s license, passport, birth certificate, tribal identification or naturalization certification number. Voters seeking to register online must provide a driver’s license number, which is verified through Arizona’s motor vehicle system.

“Not expecting either side to fight this all the way to the Supreme Court is like not expecting hot summer days in Phoenix,” said Bennett. “Today’s decision is just another step along that path and we’re prepared to fight for Arizona’s right to fair and fraud free elections.”

Here are the latest videos from the takeover of the TUSD Board meeting by La Raza students. These were loaded up on the Three Sonorans YouTube channel. One of the Three Sonorans is David A. Morales a Hispanic activist who promotes his anti-American agenda through his videography hobby. Mr. Morales is also a Ph.D. candidate in Applied Mathematics at the University of Arizona.

KMSB-11 Tucson covered the story here.
KGUN-9 Tucson covered the story here.
KVOA-4 Tucson covered the story here.
KOLD-13 Tucson covered the story here.

Navy Heritage Language program “To meet the increasing demands of the Navy’s expanding missions around the globe, the Navy Heritage Language Program seeks to identify and reward individuals with varying degrees of fluency in specific languages. The ability to speak and translate as well as apply relevant cultural insights can lead to responsibilities, incentives and training above and beyond what a typical Navy career provides.”

Fine words indeed, but the Navy put some real world incentives behind the rhetoric: “Qualified candidates can get an initial bonus of up to $10,000 upon being accepted into the program. Receive up to $400 in extra monthly pay for each language.”

$400 extra a month? Just for being able to do one’s normal duties in another language? Let’s take a look at what the Navy is interested in: Arabic, Baluchi, Chechen, Hindi, Indonesian, Kurdish, Malay, Pashtu, Persian Arabic, Punjabi, Somali, Swahili, Tamil, Tauseg/Moro, Urdu. They’ll pay for others, too. Sweet!

Just reading the list of exotic and international languages is enough to excite many a young man and woman to sit up. Punjab? The language of the Sikh warrior caste of India? Malay, the far East island world of jungles and tropical beaches? Swahili, the coastal trading Arabic-derived language of the Omani dhow trade routes, the language that gave the world “on safari?” The Navy, indeed all the other branches of the United States Military will PAY for that? What would a 20 year-old guy pay to have “Tuareg” on his resume, the tongue of the turban-wrapped, nomadic “Blue Men” of the Sahara? How cool is that?

Well, how is the American Public and Private Education system addressing this need?

The American public education system seems to be in a race to see how many schools can phase out the old foreign language staples of French and German for Spanish, and with that Spanish taught in many schools not by qualified Spanish teachers, but by computer programs like “Rosetta Stone.”

One Arizona school intoned that French was passé, so they were dropping it while they contemplated picking up Chinese to replace it. Which was never going to happen as they were suggesting replacing a pretty standard language with a shared alphabet that they had trouble teaching competently, with a different language that was hard to find in the USA and which required years of arduous study to be able to read and write, thanks to its lack of alphabet.

Spanish, we were assured, was necessary now in the United States, which should have then been justification for better instruction in it, not reliance on computers. One doesn’t go to Mexico City to talk Spanish to an ATM machine, which is about all one would be qualified to speak to.

But Americans travel all over the globe. They need languages that many people don’t even know exist. Our schools, in pace with their fail to teach math, science, history and English, each year fall behind some more in teaching foreign languages.

A Spanish exchange student here in Arizona last week leaned over next to a classmate and pointed out, “Ah, your name has an accent there, you know.”
The student, of Mexican heritage, and Hispanic, was surprised, “It does?”
The Spanish student was shocked, “These so-called Hispanic kids can’t even read or write Spanish! That guy didn’t even know how to write his own name properly!”

We encountered this same problem with our own kids as foreign students in French schools. They spoke English perfectly, with American accents, and French perfectly with French accents, but when they opened their American textbooks, they couldn’t understand them and couldn’t write in English to save their lives. It took years of deliberate and organized efforts to make sure they became competent in their mother tongue of English – paired with a year of accepting initially poor grades without panicking as the kids struggled to catch up to their Anglophone classmates.

Language competency goes beyond just conversation; it requires years of systematic vocabulary building, grammar, spelling, and composition training. The example of a Belgium family we knew personally in Ivory Coast who’d put their kids in French schools for years and then sent their oldest to Belgium to take his final exam – the Baccalaureate – in anticipation of college, was a lesson to heed. The family was from Belgium, a tiny country with two languages, French and Flemish. The boy had gone through his school years in French, but his Flemish-speaking parents blithely sent him to take the Flemish Baccalaureate. Even though he spoke fluent Flemish, he failed his Flemish BAC. He’d never learned to read or write his first language, and because of the rigidity of the European university entrance process, this unexpected fail had put his entire college and career plans in jeopardy.

The fail of language study in this country is pervasive. Anglophone Americans find grammar “hard” and spelling is not a skill, but a computer function. Exams are multiple-choice, built for ease of grading for the teacher, not for the students’ need for regular sentence or paragraph-writing discipline. Reading, crippled by the cumbersome word memorization of “Whole Language” instruction becomes an unpleasant and unproductive chore as students quickly find it impossible to memorize every word in the unabridged dictionary in order to be able to tackle comprehending even fifth grade textbooks.

Hispanic students languish in American public schools with second-rate speaking skills, and no proper training in reading and writing, setting them far behind their peers out of Mexican schools who must read, write and spell Spanish on a daily basis – in literature, in math, in science, in history classes. Few schools offer ESL courses for Hispanic students; designed to improve their spelling, grammar and composition n English, and the foreign language Spanish classes are not designed to make students competent in basic written tasks. Our children benefitted immensely through the French school FLE programs – French as a Foreign Language – designed to get non-Francophone students up to speed to be able to achieve in their regular classroom work.

Our kids have noticed the tendency for Hispanic kids to take Spanish as their foreign language – and snort. They take German, Spanish, and Japanese in addition to their French. This year, one of our students picked up Spanish class in the second semester – cold. Started halfway through and is top of the class, which includes Hispanic students, who should by rights be Easy A students, but aren’t. Meanwhile, their counterparts in Spain do all their work in Spanish, plus study English AND another foreign language like French or German or Italian. French students take English, German, Arabic, Spanish and can also add Latin.

How bad is it? The Spanish exchange student is amongst the top three in the High School English class – beating out the majority of our town’s native English speakers easily. Our initially failing first year returnee French-speaking American students shot to the top of their classes in year two. As “brown” as any Southern New World Hispanic, the multi-lingual sophomore student from Spain is taking pre-calculus and physics – with two years to go in high school; our schools have nothing higher to offer. Solid study and academic skills make achievement possible, even with an initial language handicap.

Those that do not know their history are doomed to repeat it: George Washington was well-known before he became commander of the Continental Army; his lack of foreign language skills literally provoked an international diplomatic crisis:
“When he was around twenty two years old, Washington fired some of the first shots of what would become a war between colonial powers…in 1753, when the French began to build a series of forts in Ohio Country…on land also claimed by Virginia. Robert Dinwiddie the governor of Virginia sent Major Washington to deliver a letter to the French commander asking them to leave, the French refused. In 1754 Dinwiddie sent Washington, now promoted to Lieutenant Colonel to ambush a French Canadian scouting party. After a short skirmish, Washington’s American Indian ally Tanacharison killed the wounded French commander Ensign Jumonville.

Washington then built Fort Necessity, which soon proved inadequate, as he was compelled to surrender to a larger French and American Indian force. The surrender terms that Washington signed included an admission that he had “assassinated” Jumonville. (The document was written in French, which Washington could not read.) The “Jumonville Affair” became an international incident and helped to ignite the French and Indian War, a part of the Seven Years’ War.” 1

As our military pays bonuses for what have become scarce skills in foreign languages, our schools – from coast to coast – have not delivered. Worse, ignorant educators, who are supposed to by their stated profession know better, push grossly faulty assumptions. French as a foreign language is considered “European” and somehow less relevant, so it’s disappearing as a study option for American students. Yet, the most useful foreign languages in the huge continent of Africa are English, French, Arabic and Portuguese.

While more people speak French throughout West and North Africa than in France, Portuguese is spoken by half of South America and in a number of African nations, plus Portugal, but it’s not an option in American schools. Ask most American students why Latin America is not called, “Hispanic America” and get blank stares. “Luzophone” doesn’t evoke any glimmers of recognition. What remains for French language instruction in American schools is mired in irrelevant, antiquated literature readings of truly annoying French authors like the terminally depressed and pathologically narcissist Maupassant, with nothing of the extremely popular and hilarious Asterisk and Obelisk or the sly Iznogaud.

The magic pill of computer instruction so loved by today’s schools as applied to foreign languages is a disaster. Language is fundamentally a human contact skill – meant to foster communications, cooperation and understanding between people. A machine is wholly inadequate. Languages must be taught by human beings – men and women who are competent in the languages and who can instruct others in learning to converse competently.

While students in other countries apply themselves to rigorous language study, American students are found again to be receiving a poor education product that doesn’t even come close to addressing national defense needs, much less business, commerce, diplomatic needs, and successful integration despite this nation spending billions nationally every year for schools and teachers.

Of course, how cool and how American culturally savvy would it be to have “APACHE” listed on one’s resume under ‘foreign languages?” The so-called educators today truly do not have the imaginations required to take advantage of what’s available right here, around us.

The mantra of Arizona legislators this session was “jobs, jobs, jobs” — certainly an important emphasis for any policymaker. But the desire to appear to be doing something, anything, to spur job growth sometimes sucked them into legislation that will be counterproductive to long-term economic growth.

Take Senate Bill 1041, for example, which would significantly lower property taxes for new businesses locating to or being created in Arizona, provided the companies invest a certain amount of money in their operation and hire a minimum number of employees. The bill passed both the House and Senate handily by the votes of virtually all Republican legislators and awaits the governor’s signature. The bill, however, is more than unfair to businesses that have been operating in Arizona awhile and have already hired employees and made their investments.

Some of the bill’s support was motivated by a genuine belief that carving out special benefits is a sustainable economic development strategy. But other legislators fell prey to the “do-something” impulse, explaining as the bill’s primary sponsor, Rep. Michele Reagan, did in the Arizona Republic that the bill will make Arizona more competitive while we wait for other business tax cuts to start in 2013.

Regardless of legislators’ sense of urgency or earnestness, the “do-something” bill they supported is bad policy. First, preferential tax treatment for new businesses sticks existing businesses with a higher tax burden that effectively subsidizes their competitors.

Second, SB 1041’s tax breaks will be difficult to undo; the businesses that take advantage of them aren’t likely to give them up easily when the legislation sunsets in 2017. The businesses that happen to re-locate to Arizona and claim they did so to take advantage of the tax favoritism – whether that was true or not – can hold state tax policy hostage in the future by threatening to pick up and leave if the favorable tax treatment isn’t renewed.

Bad policies enacted as a temporary fix have a way of sticking around. And legislation full of special favors like SB 1041 makes it more difficult to pass the fundamental tax reforms that can truly make Arizona more competitive in the long run.

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